I may buy an Asus Zenbook once they become available in Europe, however I'd like to know how compatible it is with Linux before buying.

From what I gather, the Zenbook has an Intel Sandy Bridge processor and Intel HD 3000 graphics. I've seen in these forums that this hardware didn't perform too well earlier. Apparently after kernel 3.0 the situation improved, but I don't know if everything is solved now.

Some reviews note that the touchpad (Sentelic) drivers are terrible in Windows, and Asus is releasing patches like crazy. I'd like to know how's the situation in linux.

From what I gather, the Zenbook has an Intel Sandy Bridge processor and Intel HD 3000 graphics. I've seen in these forums that this hardware didn't perform too well earlier. Apparently after kernel 3.0 the situation improved, but I don't know if everything is solved now.

I have gentoo on my ux31e-r009v (i5 in place of i7). Both Sandy Bridge and HD 3000 work perfectly with 3.0.6 (as mentioned in the other post)

What works:
- WiFi: OK (no problems at all, but didn't try it during installation)
- SD CardReader: OK, but not with minimal kernel, so don't count on it during install
- USB 3.0: OK, but either do not enable PCI_MSI during kernel build or disable it during boot (pci=nomsi). There is some IRQ flux taking place if you enable msi, resulting in the system not detecting new hardware properly.

Unfortunately there are some quirks:
- still don't have USB-LAN adapter right - this was a pain in the a.s during install. It seems asus put custom firmware on the dongle, resulting in different idProduct for USB device, standard ASIX drivers do not detect the hardware as their own. I'll try to fix it during the weekend and let you know if it works (if you're interested).

Not tested:
- Bluetooth

Quote:

Some reviews note that the touchpad (Sentelic) drivers are terrible in Windows, and Asus is releasing patches like crazy. I'd like to know how's the situation in linux.

Sentelic is supported in the kernel - it just works. Don't expect anything like Synaptics offered, this is Sentelic and nothing more. Even changing the pointer acceleration is hard. At least it is possible in Linux, as Windows drivers do not allow such 'advanced' configuration at all._________________--
lukost

Thanks, that's a lot of useful information. Regarding the touchpad, I've kept reading reviews complaining about how, in Windows, the pointer keeps jumping from one place to the other, and that drag and drop is nearly impossible to do. Does this happen in Linux? Also, does the Linux driver support two-finger scrolling?

Thanks, that's a lot of useful information. Regarding the touchpad, I've kept reading reviews complaining about how, in Windows, the pointer keeps jumping from one place to the other, and that drag and drop is nearly impossible to do. Does this happen in Linux? Also, does the Linux driver support two-finger scrolling?

Quick answer: no/no. I haven't observed the jitterish touchpad, it's rather laggy though (I had to get used to that - if you move your finger slowly the pointer ends up in completely different place than if you move the finger quickly, even if the finger movement distance is the same ). There is no two-finger scroll, or I do not know how to enable that.

Note, that I didn't experience the jumpy pointer issue on Windows either (and hope I won't in future).

Quote:

Does the kernel support the "fn" key combinations of the keyboard?

Yup, it does.

I've got few more updates for you:
- it is possible to run the USB-LAN dongle after some kernel module patching
- I've stated that WiFi works in my previous post. I have bad news: this is not true. It works poorly (low transfers and signal level) even if I'm seated 2m from the hotspot. The worst thing is that it disconnects completely after ~2h of work, the only successful solution is to reboot the machine. The driver is staging ath9k (standard ath9k in 3.0.6 do not detect the AzureWave subsystem).

The result: do not buy ux31e if you want to linuxify it the day you put your hands on it, as the hardware is not yet fully supported. You could partially run everything, but it requires a lot of time. Still, the result is below satisfactory.

I hope the hardware gets full kernel support in few weeks, as for the ath9k this is work in progress.

Sandy Bridge and the Intel HD graphics work fine. I can't speak for the other components, as I don't have them.

Actually, there is a well-known video tearing problem (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37686) that's been unresolved for half a year. There are ways to reduce its impact, but it's still noticeable when watching videos. I find it really annoying, and would gladly take something with an NVIDIA GPU instead, even if it means worse battery life.

Hi, a bit late and perhaps not right on target, but maybe worth a try...

I have an Asus G74 equipped with an Atheros WiFi card (AR9285 PCI-E) that gave me a similar problem as described by lukost, slow communication and repeated disconnects. The solution I found works like a charm for me -> high speed an apparently a stable connection. What I did was simply:

Code:

echo "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

My G74 does also have a Sentelic Finger Sensing Pad, although it works reasonably well (as said, slightly laggy) I really would love to get two-finger scrolling and the function key enable toggle (Fn+F9) to work like it does in windows (I'm forced to have a dual boot and use it occationally...), if anyone have any ideas I'm all ears...

Hi, a bit late and perhaps not right on target, but maybe worth a try...

I have an Asus G74 equipped with an Atheros WiFi card (AR9285 PCI-E) that gave me a similar problem as described by lukost, slow communication and repeated disconnects. The solution I found works like a charm for me -> high speed an apparently a stable connection. What I did was simply:

Code:

echo "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf

My G74 does also have a Sentelic Finger Sensing Pad, although it works reasonably well (as said, slightly laggy) I really would love to get two-finger scrolling and the function key enable toggle (Fn+F9) to work like it does in windows (I'm forced to have a dual boot and use it occationally...), if anyone have any ideas I'm all ears...

/pste

Hey,

I saw your post here and I was working on getting my g74 working as well. I found this :
https://github.com/saaros/sentelic/
I copied his sentelic.c and sentelic.h to my kernel source and rebuilt it (you'll want to clean out any already built .o/.ko files you have for pssmouse and sentelic first) . It enables two finger scrolling! Works great! Some people say it's not as accurate of a pointer, but I've yet to notice/be bothered by it. It also disables the touch click - which i don't necessarily like that it did. It's weird /sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio4/flags is set to C which means touch click should be enabled, but I guess his patch is ignoring it or controlling it elsewise. Oh well, maybe I'll look into it later. I'm just really happy you can scroll with sentelics now!

Also about the wifi - I didn't seem to have that problem (using 3.2.11), i don't have any weird disconnect or lag issues, and am not passing any special kernel/module config for ath9x.

EDIT -

I used the touchpad menu in systemsettings to control tapping. i guess the "one finger" tap got mapped to "none" so that was a simple change to left click.

There's the fspd that the gentoo wiki http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Sentelic_touchpad mentions to disable touchpad while typing. but AFAICT it doesn't work. and that option is greyed out on the "touchpad" settings menu - assuming because thats meant/used for the synaptics/syndaemon. If anyone got the disable touchpad while typing working on this it'd be great to find out how - touch pad is so sensitive and poorly placed that unless your hands/arms are at 45* angles you end up touching the touchpad frequently while typing._________________Ps = (1.5 x 6 x .75) / {(4/3) (pi) [(31.039 x 10^15) (46.5 x 10^9)]^3}
Seems like a waste..

@the.root, sorry for my ignorance of not answering - great tip! I'll definitely save this an look into it in depth when I find some time for it (which is what I explain my ingnorance with - a current extreme lack of time...)

Meanwhile I just came up with an idea! Why don't you or me (perhaps you, considering my lack of time - don't take this wrong, I'm not telling anyone, just dreaming out loud ) should start a thread under Kernel & Hardware - Asus G74, how to get everything to work - where we line up all tricks like kernel settings, kernel parameter tweaks, configrations or scripts, etc. to make things work, perhaps sorted by hardware component and desktop solution... (or is this a wiki-page?)

I've currently not had the time to start looking into:

sleep/hibernate (sleep hangs with a black screen...)
touchpad (where you've already started the knowledge collection), scroll/two-finger things, and fn-f9 to switch it on and off
wi-fi, fn-f2 to toggle wifi AND bluetooth (I never touch it, networkmanager-checkbox-only works best for me...)
backlit keyboard (fn-f3-f4) under xfce4 (works under kde4 and gnome3 [worked! gnome3 doesn't work for me at all anymore])
I don't know if the card reader works, haven't tried it
usb3 charging??? (I think windows have some kind of application for it)
Intel Turbo Boost (or whatever the windows application calls it, is this at all relevant for linux?) - the ROG button...
and perhaps some more things I cannot recall right now...

Lots of questions/issues... But, the main purpose with this post was only to say thank you for the tip!

@the.root, sorry for my ignorance of not answering - great tip! I'll definitely save this an look into it in depth when I find some time for it (which is what I explain my ingnorance with - a current extreme lack of time...)

Meanwhile I just came up with an idea! Why don't you or me (perhaps you, considering my lack of time - don't take this wrong, I'm not telling anyone, just dreaming out loud ) should start a thread under Kernel & Hardware - Asus G74, how to get everything to work - where we line up all tricks like kernel settings, kernel parameter tweaks, configrations or scripts, etc. to make things work, perhaps sorted by hardware component and desktop solution... (or is this a wiki-page?)

I've currently not had the time to start looking into:

sleep/hibernate (sleep hangs with a black screen...)
touchpad (where you've already started the knowledge collection), scroll/two-finger things, and fn-f9 to switch it on and off
wi-fi, fn-f2 to toggle wifi AND bluetooth (I never touch it, networkmanager-checkbox-only works best for me...)
backlit keyboard (fn-f3-f4) under xfce4 (works under kde4 and gnome3 [worked! gnome3 doesn't work for me at all anymore])
I don't know if the card reader works, haven't tried it
usb3 charging??? (I think windows have some kind of application for it)
Intel Turbo Boost (or whatever the windows application calls it, is this at all relevant for linux?) - the ROG button...
and perhaps some more things I cannot recall right now...

Lots of questions/issues... But, the main purpose with this post was only to say thank you for the tip!

/pste

Yeah I wanted to do a wiki or thread on it. I got everything you mentioned working, I don't think there's anything I'm missing on it. But yet I just haven't had the time yet to write it up._________________Ps = (1.5 x 6 x .75) / {(4/3) (pi) [(31.039 x 10^15) (46.5 x 10^9)]^3}
Seems like a waste..

@the.root, sorry for my ignorance of not answering - great tip! I'll definitely save this an look into it in depth when I find some time for it (which is what I explain my ingnorance with - a current extreme lack of time...)

Meanwhile I just came up with an idea! Why don't you or me (perhaps you, considering my lack of time - don't take this wrong, I'm not telling anyone, just dreaming out loud ) should start a thread under Kernel & Hardware - Asus G74, how to get everything to work - where we line up all tricks like kernel settings, kernel parameter tweaks, configrations or scripts, etc. to make things work, perhaps sorted by hardware component and desktop solution... (or is this a wiki-page?)

I've currently not had the time to start looking into:

sleep/hibernate (sleep hangs with a black screen...)
touchpad (where you've already started the knowledge collection), scroll/two-finger things, and fn-f9 to switch it on and off
wi-fi, fn-f2 to toggle wifi AND bluetooth (I never touch it, networkmanager-checkbox-only works best for me...)
backlit keyboard (fn-f3-f4) under xfce4 (works under kde4 and gnome3 [worked! gnome3 doesn't work for me at all anymore])
I don't know if the card reader works, haven't tried it
usb3 charging??? (I think windows have some kind of application for it)
Intel Turbo Boost (or whatever the windows application calls it, is this at all relevant for linux?) - the ROG button...
and perhaps some more things I cannot recall right now...

Lots of questions/issues... But, the main purpose with this post was only to say thank you for the tip!

/pste

I started a wiki on the Asus laptop build. It might be relevant to the OP or other similar Asus laptops. But certainly is to our g74sx

I'm not much of a wiki writer, and its still a WIP (several sections yet to add, working on it slowly). But hopefully it helps out.

So, I finally took the plunge and installed Gentoo on my Zenbook UX31. First of all, it's really convenient that the Zenbook comes from the factory with a disk partitioning scheme that is ready made for dual booting Windows and Gentoo. There's no need to resize partitions or delete the system restore partition.

Installation went mostly smooth, but I wasn't able to get the wireless card to work. After careful study of dkolkowski's kernel config I finally managed to solve the problem. So thank you for your post.

Right now, my biggest problem is the touchpad (mine is Elantech, by the way). I'm running the current stable kernel (3.2.12) and xorg drivers (synaptics 1.4.0). Out of the box, right click doesn't work and it's impossible to drag, for instance, to select text. After fiddling with synclient, at least I was able to right click by tapping with two fingers, which isn't really convenient. Dragging is still not possible. Any pointers would be really welcome because right now this is barely usable.

From what I read in the kernel config, the elantech touchpad driver requires an xf86-input-synaptics version higher than 1.5.0 (current stable is 1.4.0) so I may keyword the package and see what happens. Also, in the Ubuntu documentation there's a mention that kernel 3.3 has even better support for this touchpad.

By the way, in Ubuntu's documentation for the Zenbook, it says that suspend doesn't work. Not only it doesn't work, it will corrupt the RAM and that can only be solved by unplugging the battery. There are even reports in the forums of people that say that not even unplugging the battery works for them. There's a workaround by adding a script to /etc/pm/sleep.d/ to unload USB modules. Is this necessary for Gentoo? Has anyone had problems with suspend?

(...)
By the way, in Ubuntu's documentation for the Zenbook, it says that suspend doesn't work. Not only it doesn't work, it will corrupt the RAM and that can only be solved by unplugging the battery. There are even reports in the forums of people that say that not even unplugging the battery works for them. There's a workaround by adding a script to /etc/pm/sleep.d/ to unload USB modules. Is this necessary for Gentoo? Has anyone had problems with suspend?

No I don't have any problem with sleep, hibernate or with random shutdown after plug/unplug battery charger, but I also have some scripts from Ubuntu:

Just curious as to how Gentoo runs on this i7 chip. How long are compile times for some of your large packages, like OpenOffice (any other large package would do... chromium, firefox, etc.)? Any issues with excessive heat while emerging packages or in general use?

I'm interested in the ultrabook form factor, but I want to make sure an i7 processor is comparable to my current laptop, which has an "Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T3400 @ 2.16GHz".

From what I understand these i7 chips have something called Turbo Boost, that automatically pushes the chip to a single core with a higher clock speed under heavy loads. I assume that when emerging packages, the chip would spend most of its time in this state.

I ask about the heat issue, because my wife has an Asus Eee running Gentoo, and the laptop is always very hot to the touch, even when she's just browsing the web, and often has issues with long emerges, because of the heat.

Just curious as to how Gentoo runs on this i7 chip. How long are compile times for some of your large packages, like OpenOffice (any other large package would do... chromium, firefox, etc.)? Any issues with excessive heat while emerging packages or in general use?

I don't know if this information is still relevant to you, but anyway here it is:

Under normal conditions, the laptop gets just a little warm. Under stress, then it can get almost uncomfortably hot, specially the lower side when you place it on your legs. Not burning, but definitely hot. The keyboard, touchpad and palmrest, by the way, remain only slightly warm under every kind of load.

In any case, I also had an EeePC and the Zenbook is a block of ice compared to it.

And one other thing: enable RC6 in your boot line (or maybe it's enabled by default in the kernel now), it doesn't noticeably affect performance and the laptop runs much cooler.

Going to document and write things up in due course on my own wiki and will endeavour to put it on one of the two Gentoo wiki's when complete._________________"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do." - Donald Knuth

CPU:
cpufreq just works. I am able to get the temperature as well. it's quite cool, mostly. could be cooler under stress, but... eh. good enough. Firefox merged in 20 minutes, thunderbird in 22 minutes, gentoo sources in 8 minutes, kile in a minute, texlive-latex in 20 seconds, genlop in 5 seconds, heh. let me know if anyone is interested the time for something else. if I have it, I'll post it.

GFX:
using i965 intel everything just works. full hd framebuffer as well as xorg with no trouble. hdmi and vga both work. I don't know how to get the temperature though.

SSD:
running ext4 with -discard. just works.

TOUCHPAD:
elantec ps/2. works with synaptics. very good touchpad - the best that I've used.

USB3:
not tested, but I assume it "just works". I have the correct kernel module, and regular USB works fine. as a side not, be sure to turn off verbose/debug usb messages, so as to not spam a bajillion messages per millisecond.

CARDREADER:
not tested yet.

BLUETOOTH:
not tested. don't really ever use that.

HEAT:
yes. CPU is really cool, but the back part of the laptop makes it to a tabletop when compiling too much.

FN-KEYS:
using asus_wmi, but still not satisfactory. pgup/pgdn/home/end works. sysrq and insert both work. f7 works (turns off monitor). I am using pc105 layout in xorg, and there I am able to use brightness, volume and prtsc with xbindkeys. completely unable to use any of the other ones. xset led turned off the stupid led.

note that brightness will apparently set itself to whatever it damn well so pleases when you boot or dis/connect its AC supply. also note that the brightness down thing will put it to -1 (100%) if you drag it too far. "oops". I need to strace intel_backlight to figure out where it gets that info, and get it directly, so I can do max(0, that).

GENERAL NOTES:

DON'T try to install from an external DVD-reader. my poor, poor brain.
you need an USB hub since it's only got 2 USB3s.
the micro{vga,hmdi} are really close, so you need really really really slim micro -> normals. the laptop came with an microvga->vga one that's nice enough, but you need to get a microhdmi->hdmi one yourself. I recommend one that is in the same style as the one asus provides for vga.
the monitor gets fingerprints rather easily.

Last edited by indietrash on Tue Oct 30, 2012 9:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

I lost mine and duly went to the Asus online shop in the UK Its impossible to search for adapters specificlly for the UX21/UX31 family as they aren't listed. I checked the product description of every power adapter listed but none were for the Zenbooks. I contacted them listing the adapter model of the one that came with it (I'd written it down for some reason that evades me!).

Their repsonse was...

Quote:

Thank you very much for your interest in the ASUS Shop.

At the moment we are not offering the product you are looking for.

Please be kindly advised to contact the ASUS Customer Support directly to get assistance finding a retailer near you.

I replied saying that there seemed little point in contacting Customer Support if the product is not available, and politely asked for their advice as to which of the available adapters I should purchase. I still haven't heard back from them.

So, wanting to be able to use my laptop I turned to eBay and found an Asus 19V AC power adapter listed for the UX21e and duly purchased (£12). Upon arrival it didn't appear to work (no chraging lights on the laptop, wouldn't power up when plugged in), and as the battery had now run out I wasn't about to start purchasing multiple power adapters so I returned it to the UK repair center, including the alternative power adapter I received (the RMA requests that the power adapter is included).

I was duly informed that the return was out of warranty because the original power adapter was not included. I explained that was impossible because I had lost it, so there is nothing I can do about it, and asked why the warranty covered the peripherals and not the laptop (no explanation as yet).

Anyway, I've been offered a new adapter at £40, but on top of that I'm now lumbered with paying the service charge and labour (£60!!!) because its "out of warranty" !!!

Ridiculous that I can't just buy a replacement power adapter direct from Asus, but instead have to pay X1.5 over the cost of the replacement itself. To cap it all off it could take "upto eight weeks" for the replacement to arrive before the laptop is then returned to me.

Anyway, just a word of warning to be careful with your power adapters as its costs a hell of a lot to get one.

(I'll be writing a letter of complaint to Asus explaining my dismay at not being able to purchase a replacement power supply off the shelf, doubt it will achieve anything but its really f***ing annoying!)._________________"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do." - Donald Knuth